By Charlotte Webster-
East Enders veteran actress, Pam St Clement smokes a bong filled with marijuana as part of an episode on the popular British soap.
The scene is bound to excite many viewers, particularly habitual smokers of cannabis- commonly referred to as weed. Her actions as featured on the soap will not send positive signals to the British public, but could indirectly serve to glorify what is universally agreed by scientists and health experts to be a dangerous practice.
In the scene, the “teacher” warns her, “don’t take too much”, but in true Pat Butcher only absorbs deeper inhalations of the class B illegal drug.
‘The clip is one of the highlights of Pam’s U.S road trips around California and Colarado, where marijuana has been legalised for medical and private recreational use, for the ITV series Gone To Pot.
Minutes after taking a hit on that bong, Pam says she and darts player Bobby George were doubled up in “hysterics”.
75-year-old Pam has played the role of Pat Butcher in EastEnders for 26 years.
She says: “I’d never seen anything like it. It was a glass bowl with a few bits and pieces and then a pipe and a wide opening to it. It’s cooled by water.”
She and Loose Woman presenter Linda Robson, 59, Christopher Biggins , 68, ex-footballer John Fashanu, 55, and Bobby, 71, participated in smoked joints, and also ate marijuana-spiked meals on the trip. After three weeks of cannabis indulging smoking this summer, the actress has joined cannabis campaigners in urging for its legalisation in the UK.
Pam engaged in the marijuana smoking on her first night of the trip, at a hippy party in San Francisco.
“It allowed us to have the wonderment of children. But within that was the serious aspect of it – what did it do to us, how did we react to it? The pros and the cons.”
“It was like going back in a time capsule to the 1960s. I didn’t think that still existed, that hippydom.
“The five of us looked so out of place it was unbelievable. These two guys were banging on the bongos and Harry, who had invited us, was there absolutely off his face.”“I looked at Linda, Linda looked at me and what else could we do, really? It would be rude to refuse.”
Pam admits experimenting with cannabis in her younger years, but never was a regular smoker of the drug.
She said the group “were like kids at Disneyland” during the trip.
Cannabis truly has medical benefits, but the propaganda being put out to promote should be discouraged. Cannabis today is laced with all sorts of chemicals that are terrible for the mind and health, and also deplete brain cells. A growing number of young people also take pleasure in announcing that they ”smoke weed everyday”, and many do nothing but smoke weed. Extreme laziness and lack of ambition is the direct consequence of daily smoking for many cannabis users, most often dismissing the long term harmful health it poses. Smoking cannabis in bongs is also something that should not be encouraged because it is usually concentrated with a heap of cannabis without the tobacco inclusion that typically dilutes its strength, though does not deplete its harmful effects.
It symbolizes addiction and undermines the body which should be treated as a temple by those thinking straight and sensibly. If used for medical purposes alone, under prescription, it is different from the reprehensive servitude that emerges when smoked recreationally and perpetually .